


the right side of the wrong bed

by myrmidryad



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, it's still kind of sad though, kinda has a happy ending?, sort of, well it's not a sad ending, well...it's not a break-up sad ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 13:56:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1552886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one likes the miserable drunk. They always ruin the parties and drag everyone else down.</p><p>Naturally, that’s when Combeferre walks into the bar and smiles in greeting when he sees Grantaire.</p><p> </p><p>Or, Grantaire goes to a bar to be away from Enjolras for a while and ends up spilling his insecurities to Combeferre by accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the right side of the wrong bed

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Drunk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2fOum_KWQU) by Ed Sheeran, which I basically listened to on repeat while I wrote this.

Getting away from Enjolras is much harder now they live together.

Ideally, Grantaire would never need to get away from his boyfriend, but he’s not perfect, and sometimes…sometimes things get difficult. Things get loud, in his head, and he just needs to not be around Enjolras for a while. Maybe a night. Maybe a day. Never much longer.

It used to be much, much easier, before they moved in together. He used to be able to go back to his and crack open the beer and drown himself in it. His nice, empty apartment. Empty of expectations, of pity, of awkwardness.

He has rules for his relationship with Enjolras. Strict rules he _has_ to stick to. Chiefest among them is keeping his mouth shut from time to time. Enjolras likes him to be honest – wants him to be honest – so Grantaire doesn’t lie to him. But he can’t say the things on his mind sometimes, so in compromise, he bites down on his tongue and extracts himself from the situation.

There are compromises in every relationship. He knows this. So when his mind comes up with a sharp, bitter response to something Enjolras says, he keeps it in. Enjolras likes to analyse and poke and prod at things he doesn’t fully understand. Grantaire prefers to leave well alone from things he know will hurt. He’s told Enjolras so much already, so many painful things – Enjolras knows about his shitty childhood, knows about his appalling self-esteem, knows at least a little of Grantaire’s terror at the idea of them separating.

But he can’t know too much. There are some things Grantaire needs to keep to himself, because there’s no point in telling Enjolras all of it. He can’t help. Or he might try to help and make things worse.

The point is this: sometimes, Enjolras can be cruel. He doesn’t mean to be, but sometimes he says things without really thinking them through. Today’s gem: “If we broke up though, you’d get over it. I mean, people move on.”

He says these things without realising that it’s like hurling a rock into a pond. Grantaire’s mind explodes on contact –

He’s going to leave me. Is he going to leave me? Why would he say that? I’m overreacting again. I wouldn’t get over it. He’d get over it. Is he going to leave me? He’d get over it. I’m just being an idiot. What if he leaves me? He doesn’t know how much I need him. He can’t know. He’d leave me. Is he going to leave me? No one likes a clingy boyfriend. Why would he say that? He could leave me easily. I wouldn’t get over it, I wouldn’t move on. He would move on. He’d find someone else, it’d be easy for him. He mustn’t know how much I need him or he’ll leave me, is he going to leave me, what if he leaves me, what will I do, doesn’t he care? Doesn’t he want me? Wouldn’t he fight for me? Does he love me? He doesn’t love me, why would he love me, he mustn’t find out or he’d definitely not love me then and he’d leave, he’s going to leave me, I can’t let him know. Is he trying to get me used to the idea? Is he going to leave me? Does he want to gauge my reaction? What if I react in the wrong way? Too much = too clingy, I’ll scare him off. Too little = I’m okay with us breaking up and he’ll leave me, I don’t want him to go, please don’t let him go, I need him, I need him, I need him –

Objectively, Grantaire knows that he’s being utterly ridiculous. It was a throwaway comment that Enjolras wasn’t even thinking about. He would never hurt Grantaire intentionally. He’s not going to leave.

But the explosion happens anyway and Grantaire spirals down and hates himself for it because it’s not Enjolras’ fault and there’s nothing either of them can do about it – it’s just the way Grantaire is. And the couple of times Grantaire talked to Enjolras about it, it went terribly. Enjolras takes these things personally, even though it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with Grantaire’s fucked-up brain that takes tiny comments and twists them into giant whirlpools that suck Grantaire down almost before he’s realised what’s happening.

He can’t even do something like turn the question back on Enjolras to try and show him how awful it makes him feel. He can see it happen in his mind – he’d ask Enjolras how it’d feel if _he_ left him and told him he’d just get over it. And Enjolras would just shrug and agree and that would feel like drinking poison. He can’t ask these things and confirm what he already knows. It hurts too much. He doesn’t ask questions like that – he doesn’t ask Enjolras to pick him up from work or come and see him perform when he gigs for bands who need a hand. He knows Enjolras doesn’t have the time and probably wouldn’t want to, so why ask just to be refused? Why bring it up at all? If he ever comes close, Enjolras reminds him of how busy he is, and that’s the end of it.

So he’s at a bar on a Tuesday evening, wondering miserably how to tease the truth just enough to make it fit around his concealments. He can’t say he went out with a friend because he’s avoiding everyone he knows in order to drink alone. He can’t say he went in to use the bathroom because Enjolras will be able to tell he’s been drinking. He could say he just felt like a drink, but he’ll be hours yet. He could say he got chatting to someone, but to tell Enjolras that he would first have to actually talk to someone, which he’s opposed to at the moment. He could say he talked to the bartender – ordering drinks counts as talking in a loose sense.

It’s not lying. If pressed, he’d tell more of the truth. But this way is easier.

He feels like shit, and he knows no one likes the miserable drunk, so he’s saving everyone else the trouble of dealing with him as well. Besides, the only people he feels genuinely close to are Enjolras’ friends. They were Enjolras’ friends first, and Grantaire doesn’t go to all of their meetings anyway, and he knows they only put up with him because of Enjolras, and because occasionally he provides entertainment for them.

He’s not really in their little club. He puts his name on the sign-up sheets when he goes to the meetings, and he gets the emails, but he’s not really _in_ it like they are. They only _let_ him hang out with them – he’s an amusing sideshow at best. He doesn’t want to embarrass them or burden them with his idiotic thoughts when he’s like this.

No one likes the miserable drunk. They always ruin the parties and drag everyone else down.

Naturally, that’s when Combeferre walks into the bar and smiles in greeting when he sees Grantaire.

By the time he’s come over and sat next to him at the bar, Grantaire has experienced elation (he’ll be able to tell Enjolras he got talking to Combeferre, it’s perfect), despair (he’ll have to pretend to be cheerful and reign in the misery he’d planned to wallow in), and resignation (it could be worse). All in time to return Combeferre’s smile, if a little weakly, and raise his glass.

“What brings you here? I thought I was the only one who knew this place.”

“Apart from Bahorel,” Combeferre reminds him. “Bahorel knows everywhere.”

“True. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Thank you.”

Combeferre has had a bad day, it turns out, and Grantaire is strangely pleased to be allowed in on this fact. Not many people see Combeferre at anything but top performance, and while Grantaire’s seen behind the scenes before thanks to Enjolras, Enjolras isn’t here right now. Combeferre trusts him enough for that not to matter, it seems, and it’s nice.

But Combeferre’s willingness to trust is what’s landed him in trouble – the school he’s been working at as a semi-permanent substitute teacher for the past eight months is royally screwing him over and leaving him in a very unpleasant situation.

“I might have to take them to court,” he concludes, head bent and shoulders hunched. “They’re in the wrong and they know it, but it’s still going to be time-consuming and probably expensive. And no one’s going to want to hire a teacher who filed a lawsuit against his last school.” He sighs and finishes his drink, ordering another couple for them. “Sorry for unloading all this on you.”

“It’s not a problem,” Grantaire tells him. “It’s not like I was Captain Cheery when you came in anyway.” The sudden honestly is a reminder of why he drinks alone when he’s unhappy – he can never bite his tongue in time after he’s had a few drinks. It’s one of the reasons he’s so very careful about drinking around Enjolras. He knows his limits and he sticks to them rigidly to make sure nothing slips out by accident.

“Want to talk about it?” Combeferre invites.

“I…don’t?” Grantaire frowns at the question. “Fuck. Sorry. I don’t talk about it, is what I meant.”

“Why not?”

“No one likes to hear that crap.”

“You just listened to my crap,” Combeferre points out. “Let me return the favour. Trust me – I feel a lot better now it’s not all just in my head.”

Grantaire shakes his head. “I can’t, I really can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re his best friend. Fuck.” He gulps at his drink and scowls. “Sorry, forget that.”

“Enjolras can be a little much sometimes,” Combeferre says after a moment. “You can talk to me, you know. I won’t tell him.”

“How do you know I won’t tell you all sorts of shit?” Grantaire demands. “Where you’ll have to pick sides?”

“Because you’re both my friends, and you love each other. Or at least, I assume the second part is true – the first part certainly is.” He says it so easily. Confident people do that, Grantaire’s noticed. They don’t doubt their own words the way he does. Enjolras does it too. So do most of his friends, come to that.

It’s just another way Grantaire differs from them, he supposes – he second-guesses practically every thought that pops into his head. It makes things loud and circular and thoroughly unpleasant on occasion. And then he drinks, and it calms down a bit. God bless alcohol.

“Guess,” he challenges.

Combeferre looks at him, eyes narrow behind his glasses. “He said something to upset you,” he says at last. “And you’re hiding?”

R raises his eyebrows and lifts his glass. “You’re good,” he mutters, taking a drink.

“Talk to me,” Combeferre invites again. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s not important.”

“You’re upset – it’s important enough.”

R sighs and finishes his drink, signalling for another. They’re tricky, these situations – if he keeps insisting it was nothing, it’ll blow up in Combeferre’s mind to unnatural proportions and he’ll think it’s far worse than it actually is. So he has to say something. But the truth really is so petty.

“It’s really nothing,” he sighs. “It never is. It’s always shitty little things that don’t mean anything – I just get stuck on stuff like that and it needs to run its course before I can go back. There’s nothing he could do, and he’d take it personally, so I don’t bother him with it.”

“You don’t think he’d want to know anyway? Even if there was nothing he could do?”

“He takes it personally,” Grantaire repeats. He can be a little snappish with Combeferre – he’s not so scared of losing him. “I have to be careful. I have to make things good when we’re together. I can’t let him see me like this. I make sure he doesn’t.”

“You keep him at a distance?”

“Only when I’m like this.” Grantaire receives his new drink and takes a big gulp, head spinning slightly. “There’s nothing he could do and there’s no good ending to a scenario where he sees me like this. He’d think it was his fault, and if I explained, I’d just end up explaining me, and that would probably be a really stupid thing to do.”

Combeferre raises his eyebrows, and Grantaire takes another gulp before elaborating.

“I’m always going to be like this – I’m always going to latch onto little things and blow them out of proportion and send myself into these holes. I can handle it; he doesn’t need to know. I don’t want him to know, because he’d think…he’d think it was him, that it was us, that we’re unhealthy. And we’re not, you know? It’s not _us_ that’s unhealthy. It’s me. It’s just me.” Another gulp. “And then…you know, I think about this stuff all the time, I can’t help it, and it’s not like I know what will set me off. I don’t want him to weigh his words around me or anything like that. It’s fucking exhausting, having to do that. And if he found out that _I_ did it, he’d know I’m fucked up. Not like…not anything really bad, but he’d think it was his fault, do you get it? He’d think he was the one causing this, when really it’s just me.”

“And you think he’d leave you for your own good,” Combeferre says quietly, and Grantaire looks away, almost flinching.

“I need him.” He’s never said it so plainly before. “He can’t know how much – he’d think it was unhealthy. No one…” He sways, trying to order his words. “No one likes a clingy partner. The best way to drive someone away is to hold on too tight. So I can’t. I know it sounds screwed up,” he adds, glancing at Combeferre. “But I’m okay with it. I know I love him more, and I’m okay with that because it’s just amazing that he loves me at all. I can’t mess this up – I can’t lose him. He thinks – this is what he said today – he thinks if we broke up that I’d just get over it, y’know? Because people always move on.”

“But you wouldn’t move on.” The same tone as earlier – it’s a fact, and Grantaire appreciates Combeferre stating it as such, because it’s true.

“No. I’d die. I mean, not literally, but if he left…and he’d be the one leaving if we broke up, because I’d never leave him, so he’d be the one walking away, and if he did, I don’t know what I’d do. No one wants to hear this crap. It’s fucking creepy – you can’t just tell people you’d die for them, or that you want to spend the rest of your life with them, or that you’d do anything they want. You can’t say you’d jump off a building or take a bullet for someone you’re in love with. It’s too much. I mean, if I was him and I heard that, I’d run. Who wouldn’t? It’s too much – _I’m_ too much. I love him too much, and he can’t know or he’ll leave me. He’d think it was his fault for making me this way, when it isn’t.”

There’s a long pause while Grantaire finishes his drink, and then Combeferre says, “You really think you love him more?”

Grantaire snorts. “I know I do. He could ask me to do anything and I’d do it. If he left me, I’d pretend to get over him if it made him feel better. I make sure I don’t say anything that’ll upset him because it kills me to see him sad. I know I love him more than he loves me, but that’s fine.” He smiles slightly, looking down at the edge of the bar. “We’re happy. I’m okay with days like this coming around because the rest of the time, it’s amazing. I’ve never been happier. He loves me – he tells me so, all the time.” His smile grows. “He lets me see him with his guard down and he looks at me…Jesus, the way he looks at me…”

It makes him feel beautiful, the way Enjolras looks at him. Eyes full of love and wonder and pleasure because he wants Grantaire there with him. Some days it gives him goosebumps. Enjolras will refer to him as his boyfriend, and Grantaire will blush. Enjolras will climb into his lap on their sofa ( _their_ sofa) and cling to him. He’ll run his fingers through Grantaire’s hair and press little kisses all over his face and tell him how much he loves him. Those moments are worth everything. And those moments are so gloriously _frequent_.

“So what if I freak out every now and then?” Grantaire shrugs helplessly. “It’s not worth risking the rest of it. I don’t want him to know I’m chained to him. It’d just weigh him down, and I don’t want him to try and cut me off. I don’t want him to feel guilty. I want him to be happy. I’d do anything to make him happy.”

“Even go through days like this alone?” Combeferre asks quietly, and Grantaire sighs.

“It’s worth it if he’s happy.”

He leaves not long after, getting a taxi home at Combeferre’s insistence (after extracting a promise from him that he won’t breathe a word of all the depressing shit Grantaire spewed out), and it’s such a relief to be able to tell Enjolras the actual truth – he went to have a drink, met Combeferre, and got talking.

Enjolras smiles and makes him shower and brush his teeth before kissing him, pulling him into bed and curling around him. His bulk against Grantaire’s back is solid and warm, and their knees fit together so perfectly, Enjolras arm wrapping around him, cuddling close.

Enjolras is his _boyfriend_ , and they’re falling asleep in _their_ bed, in _their_ apartment. It’s worth the occasional down day to come back to paradise like this.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/A221HQ9) <3


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